Meanwhile, Plaid Cymru has been effectively leaderless. In Wales Labour have Carwyn Jones as a credible leader, a reassuring figure who can rock a few boats without making any waves, which kind of suits the Welsh temperament. There the nationalists have completely out-manoeuvred Labour in ‘Standing Up’ for their country. The party judged that all it needed to do was to consolidate that position by adopting the slogan ‘Standing Up for Wales’, which sounds more nationalist than Plaid Cymru’s anaemic ‘For a Better Wales’ – certainly there’s been some cross-dressing going on there.Ĭontrast the contest here with the more dramatic campaign that is underway in Scotland. The party experienced a bounce in the polls of around 10 per cent following last year’s UK general election and this has been sustained pretty much since. Undoubtedly Labour has benefited from the presence of a Conservative-led government in London. Welsh General Election polls: Regional List vote Poll/date Welsh General Election polls: Constituency vote Poll/date However, my analysis of their contents here amply fulfilled my previous prediction that a good deal of political cross-dressing was about to unfold, see here. In particular both Labour and the Tories have gone into much greater detail on what they have in mind than ever before, stimulated in part by the successful referendum on more powers. Nor have they been helped by the general absence of eye-catching game-changing policies. Of course, the parties have not been helped by the many distractions, from the good weather and numerous bank holidays to the royal wedding and the discovery of the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden. It seems the four-week campaign through April has made no difference at all. What is striking, and what is also confirmed by all the opinion polls carried out this year culminating in ITV’s Yougov poll yesterday (shown in the tables below) is what little variance there has been. Having arrived at Welsh General Election day the time has come to look back at the predictions I made about the about the campaign and its result in early March. John Osmond hazards some guesses as to how a soporific campaign might lead to a nervous breakdown in the next few days
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